


Two Bitten Hearts

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Editor!Remus, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU, but i love it, healthy adult discussion, that intangible rarity in slash fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12679290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Temporary loneliness always tastes like bad wine, but despite all the ways Sirius has tried to cure it in the past there still remains one wonder in a tidy little basement that washes it all clear for a blessed stretch of time.





	Two Bitten Hearts

_I stayed till morning;  
_ _I hung the cloak on the wall while you were sleeping.  
_ _You cried ‘Will you teach me?  
_ _So we can be two bitten hearts sleeping’…_

—Aldous Harding, “Two Bitten Hearts”

—

Remus buttons his greatcoat with quick flicks of his fingers as he floats a sheaf of papers neatly into the open briefcase on the floor, impeccably ordered like everything he touches even in the flurry of exiting. 

“Have I remembered everything?” He asks aloud, turning once in a full circle as if his eyes landing on anything inane could jog his memory for an abandoned quill or galley book. Sirius looks on from the sofa with a mix of amusement and the familiar pang of already missing him, as it goes every time Remus leaves the flat for extended business. Sirius has always supposed it’s one of the more canine things that’s stuck its way into his nervous system. 

“If you have, I’ll post it to you,” he hums. Remus never lets him help get anything together anymore—lovingly, of course. Not after Sirius accidentally sent him off to Berlin with reams of the wrong copy, potions instead of herbology, which was apparently a staggering offense to the academic types. 

“You’re a dream,” Remus says fervently, sidestepping the wide brim of their fresh Christmas tree to sweep in and plant a solid kiss on Sirius’ lips. 

“Remember that next time I’ve forgotten to wash my dishes,” Sirius murmurs in cheeky reply, covering the welt of subtle sadness within him by reaching forward to tug on the knot of Remus’ tie and pull him in for another longer, slower kiss. 

“Alright, _okay,_ Pads, if I don’t leave now I’ll miss the train,” Remus babbles as he pulls back and strokes a farewell thumb across Sirius’ bottom lip.He shuffles together his briefcase and pockets the shrunk-down trunk with his four-days’-worth of clothes inside before stepping backwards into the hearth. “I’ll return with last-minute gifts in abundance; say hello to Andromeda and the others for me. I love you, madly.”

“Adore you more, will do. Travel safe, love.” Sirius holds up a hand to see him off from his perch on the sofa. Remus announces the train station before green flames engulf him and once the crackle of dying embers is the only company left in the flat, Sirius sighs to sprawl out in a long lay across the couch. 1984 has been kind, but 1984 has also been exhausting in the realm of Remus getting called to further and further reaches of the world to be a wonderful, brilliant professional. Sirius tries not to stew on it. They’ve talked about this at length, how Sirius is adamant he doesn’t want the regular distance to be a strain on anything but with both of them quietly unsure how to remedy it. It used to be charming when it was only a couple days once every three or four months. Now, work was beginning to eat up at least a week-and-a-half of all Remus’ good days every month. Any way he looks at it, Sirius is stressed.

Andromeda has picked up on the shift like a scent, so she’s insisted he spend a few days with them by the sea, _To get your mind off your own self and focus on my lovely daughter who thinks you hung the stars._ Heaving another light sight, Sirius closes his eyes to steal at least a bit of peace before visiting the only family left worth seeing is sure to drain him in the least-unpleasant way. 

—

The Tonks household looks like shit from the outside. 

It isn’t by any accident of Andromeda’s or Ted’s that the house looks like a shuttered-up boathouse just a bit too close to the shoreline for comfort, salt-stained and sun-bleached wood looking like it might crack under the lightest touch of the sun that only really shines here in the summertime. On the contrary—the couple is exceedingly good at glamours. Keeping prying familial eyes and the sniffing noses of Death Eaters away several years ago was the chief concern, and so Andromeda had sacrificed the fantasy of a lovely country home on the exterior to keep her little brood safe. Over time, she had just come to like the odd little look of the coop. 

The interior, however, is an aesthetic designer’s wet dream. 

“Dromeda?” Sirius calls as he ducks through the front door, inhaling the permanent charm of fresh autumnal spices like a warming draught. He shuts the door solidly behind behind him and toes off his boots as he takes stock of the home. The entryway is lined with three of every winter accessory hung on brimming hooks, the sitting room stuffed with a pine tree that was obviously too tall for the ceiling before somebody charmed the architecture taller to let the peaked green bristles just barely brush the painted plaster.

A patter of feet rounds the corner as Sirius is draping his coat and scarf over the only free coat hook on the wall, and he turns to see a surprisingly gangly Nymphadora with bottle-green hair and a tooth-gapped grin wider than springtime. “Siri!”

“Arthur’s bollocks, Dora?!” Sirius throws open his arms for the goofy-looking girl and she giggles madly, flinging herself into him to let him pick her up and twirl her around like did last time he saw her just under a year ago when she was significantly smaller. “Who the hell let you get so tall!”

Sirius deposits her back on the ground with markedly more effort than it took last time he saw his little cousin. Andromeda had actually been worried about her daughter’s growth rate for a time, when the girl had been stuck just shy of 120 centimeters tall for several months around nine years old. It seems the problem had solved itself. 

“I’m going to be grown-up soon,” Nymphadora says confidently to Sirius, her high voice thrumming with excitement while her hair changes wildly from green to pink and into a shock of orange as she speaks. 

“Are you now?” Sirius replies, ruffling the colorful mop on her head and wandering into the kitchen. “That’s exciting! Do you know where your mum’s gone?”

“Daddy is at work, but mummy is in the basement working on a project he brought home earlier,” Nymphadora says as she shuffles and skips along beside Sirius. Sirius feels a quiver of envy in the annals of his younger self at his little cousin’s freedom of abandon, her ability to wriggle her new-long limbs and prattle on as she wants without the threat of corporal punishment, before dispelling the ancient and useless hurt with a mischievous grin down at the little face that’s quickly becoming a spitting image of her mother. 

“Want to sneak up on her?” Sirius suggests darkly. Nymphadora’s eyes flare with a particular glint of delighted mischief he recognizes as his own side of the genetics, and he takes her hand to lead her with dramatic quietness over to the half-shut basement door. 

“Daddy’s brought in a new gadget from work, he’s having mummy see if she had to charm it,” she whispers loudly as Sirius eases open the door without so much as a creak from its hinges. 

“Oo, a Muggle gadget?” Sirius loves to indulge the childlike wonder in his cousin, especially as she’s gotten older and gained more agency to come up with fantastical stories for the mundane. 

“I don’t think so, he said it came from an old wizard’s house.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t sneak up on her then,” Sirius says, peering down the basement staircase when a buoyant swoosh of watery-sounding magic sounds from below. “We wouldn’t want to muddle anything, would we?”

“Good idea,” Nymphadora decides, still whispering as she nods with wiseness so far beyond her years that Sirius has to hold in a laugh. “We could sneak later, when she’s in the garden.”

“Capital, Dora, you’re a genius.” Sirius claps her on the shoulder and she beams as her hair shifts to a brilliant red. Sirius leads the girl down the staircase, careful to hold back his habitual two-at-a-time stride, and can’t help beaming to see Andromeda knelt in concentration over a wide basin with her wand tucked behind her ear to hold back a fall of tumbling golden hair.

“Your mother would have a heart attack if she saw you in coveralls with your sleeves rolled up like this,” Sirius announces. Andromeda whirls to face him with equal part surprise and elation, standing up and reaching immediately to bundle him into a sisterly embrace. 

“I’m so glad you could make it!” She cries before she holds Sirius at forearm’s length to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear out of maternal habit. “Remus has avoided us all yet again, hasn’t he? Stop, you know I’m only joking. He’s getting quite famous, though, isn’t he now?”

Andromeda turns back to her project as Sirius shrugs, a bashful smile spreading across his face to cover the reverberating lance of despair at the regularity of his solitude for the fairly meteoric success Remus has been facing lately. “He’s very good at what he does.” Stepping closer to peek over Andromeda’s shoulder—“Holy shit, is that a Pensieve?”

“Language,” Andromeda says with warning, her eyes darting immediately to Nymphadora’s onlooking. 

“Daddy says worse sometimes,” the girl argues easily. 

“Daddy forgets to watch his mouth when mummy isn’t there to police, doesn’t make it any less bad,” Andromeda sighs. “Yes, it’s a Pensieve. Ted got ahold of it from work, seized from some poor sod outside of London in a raid on former—supporters.” She has always been careful to not rile her daughter with the oilier specifics of the titles involved with the wizarding wars, guarding the fragility of innocence with the avoidance of terms like “Death Eaters” and “murder.” Sirius has his disagreements about this method of raising children—especially Nymphadora, considering how bright she is already—but then again it isn’t like he’s ever had much of a future in that occupation to begin with. 

“So you get to keep it?” Sirius circles round to other side of the wide stone basin, refraining from crouching to touch the silver liquid within with the barest thread of resolve.

“The Ministry didn’t want to keep it, said it could serve as a channel and compromise something on the off-chance. You know how uppity they get. So they sent it home to the first one willing to haul it out, just my luck I’ve a husband who’s gleaned far too much interest in _stuff_ from one Arthur Weasley.” Andromeda sounds exasperated, but the sparkle in her hint of a smile belies the girlish excitement in her beneath the surface. Sirius mirrors the grin and nods at the limpid liquid reflecting palely up at their faces. 

“Have you tried it yet?”

“Only just got it glowing.”

“Do you even _want_ to try it?”

Andromeda looks up at him for a moment before cracking into laughter. “Hell and ash, Sirius, you know me too well.”

“Leave it to the one who told Aunty to bugger off before hardly coming of age to consider every old memory garbage,” Sirius hums. Andromeda leans across the Pensieve, her hands gripping the stoney edge and narrows her eyes with teasing challenge. 

“Har-har, you snot. Ted wants to revisit some of his childhood favorites with Dora sometime, he figured this was more than ideal. Only tasked my _far superior_ talents with charming it back awake and making sure it wasn’t cursed.” Turning then to face her daughter, “And speaking of talented ladies, I think somebody is eager to take her cousin down to the beach!”

Nymphadora cheers and Andromeda herds her back up the stairs to fetch a hat and a blanket for sitting while Sirius trudges up happily behind them, but the barest fraction of his mind stays hinged on the eddying sheen of the Pensieve. He wonders for several moments if there are any memories worth revisiting in full like that, as any visit with Andromeda dredges up what little happy scraps of his past exist when they inevitably get slightly toasted on her good gin and talk about the best ways they soiled the family name as children.

Letting the thought marinade in the back of his mind, Sirius helps weave a thicket of warming charms around their little trio before setting out to sit on the sand without their coats in the middle of December. 

—

Much later that night, buzzed from drink and happy reminiscing with Andromeda and Ted once Nymphadora had gone to bed, Sirius lies awake in a guest bed that’s far to large and far too comfortable for just one person.

Remus has been here with him on weekends twice before—once when they had first moved into the flat and Andromeda unknowingly gave them separate rooms, and again after they exchanged their rings and Andromeda happily let them share the larger guest room. Remus’ work has, _yet again,_ stolen much of his time that could be spent here, but Sirius’ mind still rings sweetly now with the imaginings of the past and possibility at once. In the plainest and benign sense, he’s really very lonely. 

Half-sleepy and half-tipsy, Sirius lets his memories wander wide into the aether of his happier bouts of existence. His mind has been stuck on an engine turnover of the past all day, since arriving this morning, and he can’t—

_Bollocks on brimstone, of course, the bloody Pensieve in the basement!_ Sirius sits up automatically with the thought of a quiet trek downstairs. Into which moment would he even throw himself? Countless nights of heavenly contentment reel through his brain like a haywire roll of photographs, either lying calm in Remus’ arms or twisting with delectable heat through the twinning of their bodies. He could dive back to the first time he made Remus cum, or—no, even just the thought of wanking under Andromeda’s roof makes Sirius feel strangely unclean. It would have to be something gentle, something calm and sweet and quiet that would serve as the perfect distraction from all this misty unsurety.

Sirius’ heart stammers with sudden arrival when he remembers the suspended perfection of the memory he hones in on like bloody Cupid’s arrow through the organ. 

Mind staunchly made up, Sirius slips silent from the sheets and pulls on his shed shirt. He sidles out from his door, tiptoes evenly through the muttering silence of the darkened house, stops once at the window before the hallway to appreciate the view of the glittering midnight sea, and descends as soundlessly as possible onto the basement staircase after making sure to carefully shut the door behind him. 

The Pensieve is still glowing that watery silver beyond the foot of the stairs, drawing him near like a moth to a flame. Nothing else is really set in this basement, a small space in this Victorian-era house used only for storage and a place for Nymphadora to explore when she gets bored and her imagination wants to wander. The stone of the basin is something between marble and granite upon closer inspection, and as Sirius runs his hand along its lip he feels a pulsing warmth at its core like a slow heartbeat. 

“Hello there,” he murmurs, addressing the hum of it that he can feel yet not hear, like the lowest purr of some massive cat—he hates cats, this make no sense, but he’s still half-high on sleeplessness and wants desperately to see the old hasp of himself and Remus in adolescence, so he leans forward to peer into the shallow shimmer. His face is refracted back at him with the weft of liquid, bent and warped but his face nonetheless, and he reaches for his wand like a magnet.

Sirius distantly thanks his petulant Third Year impulsiveness for squirreling away instructions for a memory extraction incantation along with a sheaf of Animagus materials one night in the library at school. He had meant to use it in some sort of prank someday, perhaps to plague his least favorite people with sudden amnesia, but he had never gotten around to it. Sirius feels a pang of gladness now, something almost similar to pride, that he saved the knowledge for himself instead when he never knew he might have needed it. Accidental genius, etcetera, etcetera.

He kneels into a sit beside the basin so he can lean comfortably over its depths for as long as he wants. Wand pressed gingerly to his left temple, Sirius murmurs the spell’s incantation and reaches for the right memory—drags it to the front of his mind, fills his inner senses with the image of the Shrieking Shack pale in early April sunrise, the smell of old wood and misty dewfall through the window, and mostly the earthy presence of Remus’ forest-marked skin masking the secretive twist of his own scent. The memory hums slightly against the bone of his skull as he draws it out, spindly and thread-like and precious as unicorn blood, and when Sirius lowers it into the basin he can’t help but loose a breathy little laugh of wonder at the way it flutters against the water like a fussy little roach fish before settling into a graceful twist in the current of the standing liquid. 

“Alright, Rem, see you on the inside,” Sirius whispers. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and lowers his face into the basin like crossing some sort of gauzy veil.

When Sirius opens his eyes, he feels emotion crash through him like breaking waves. The Shack is exactly as he always remembers it, all of its horrid sweetness preserved in his memory like amber. Gentle wind buffets the walls gently and makes them creak in a chorus he will forever associate with the slow waking of the morning after a full moon run, and Sirius must steel himself before looking to his left where he knows the bed is shoved into the corner like an afterthought. 

When he finally turns, he has to bite back a flummoxing riot of feelings, old and new and everything in between. The two long-limbed 16-year-olds huddled together on the bed are still fast asleep, breathing slow and even through the thickets of their separate sleep. Sirius’ own back is facing him, guarding Remus from the proverbial beasts of the outside with the unflagging but put-on bravado he could never, try as he might nowadays, forget he possessed at this age.

Stepping one step closer, mindful of the creaking floorboards for a moment before remembering his wraith-like state of observance has no bearing on the physical reality of this place, Sirius looks closer at the way he and Remus had held each other. It's almost painful to see, with the distance of time and experience behind him, the undiluted ardency in the way he had gathered Remus close that morning. Remus’ head is lovingly tucked against his collarbone, his body curled gratefully—if not unknowingly—into the inviting envelope of Sirius’. Sirius has cradled him close as if he might break if one of them stirred. Sirius feels his heart soar as the observer to know that despite the loads of utter bullshit these two boys were going to have to weather just to find the bright spots between them in the years to come, it would all even out in a quiet flat in a little town they could finally call their own. 

Sirius’ pulse jumps as he sees himself begin to wake blearily, and he lights quickly to the foot of the bed for a better vantage point of the pair as a whole. He watches himself open his eyes—an almost eerie feeling, for the doubled sensation of watching and remembering the exact feeling of this on multiple full moon mornings—to look down at Remus with an expression that is nothing but pure, unfettered love. He watches himself catalogue the sleeping grace of Remus while the Shack groans in whispering debris and the scrabbles of unseen life beneath the floorboards, and it’s like watching a flower open to the sun. He had hardly known himself that he was this enamored from the outset. 

After several long moments of Sirius’ twinned vigil, Remus wakes quietly with a twitch of his shoulders and a sharp inhale through his nose—the same way he always has. Sirius leans closer, sees with a lovely pull to his heart the retrospective of how maturity has preserved this boyish beauty but brought it with fresh grace into adulthood as well. There are several places on the long stretch of his body, parts of his limbs bared for the way the blanket is skewed poorly across the two boys, where Sirius notices scars will take up topography in several years. Remus’ eyes are exactly the same as the first day they met before they’d even been sorted. 

“Morning,” Sirius’ waking form whispers, doing nothing to obfuscate the tenderness of this position. _Aren’t you bold,_ Sirius thinks to himself with the slightest sense of pride. 

“How’d we fare?” Remus asks simply, his voice creaking like a tree bough but _Merlin,_ Sirius’ nerves hum pleasantly to hear that hint of reedy timbre in Remus’ words that had been flexed off steadily as the boy gained confidence and many measures of strength over time. Remus lets himself remain near to Sirius, sharing warmth’s precious scarcity still so early in spring and, by the looks of it, curling ever so slightly closer.

“No wounds or worries,” Sirius replies, and _My, you were brave, you reckless thing,_ he picks a leaf out from a lock of Remus hair so sweetly it might as well have been a kiss instead of the touch of his fingers. 

“Good,” Remus says through a yawn, shifting his shoulder to scoot himself up a titch; whether the leveling of his face with Sirius’ is intentional or not even this memory doesn’t tell. “Good. You know I hate when you get banged up as well.”

“We’re all fine,” Sirius reassures him again, and Sirius marvels at the freedom of affection swimming around in those past eyes of his. “James and Pete have gone to pilfer and set out breakfast, only the finest spread for our King Wolf back in the room.”

Remus tries at a laugh but fails halfway through, and Sirius watches in fascination as his adolescent lack of grace scrambles silently in the shadows of his eyes and slight furrow of the brow to figure out what went wrong with his attempt at levity. He remembers how this sudden silence felt like the end of the world, yet it isn’t but another second before Remus sighs lightly and shakes his head. 

“Just—can you think of it as something separate from me?” He asks gently. “The beast. Creature. Wolf. Whatever you want to call it. It isn’t _me,_ I’m not it, I’m—not the king of any bloody curse..."

Remus trails off, and it tugs something deep in Sirius’ insides to see that the boy’s scrim of a scowl hasn’t changed in almost a decade. _Fucking hell,_ ten years has flown by. He sees the twitch in his own shoulder that signals the impulse he remembers so clearly to hold Remus, arrested like a firebrand, not wanting to scorch anything so undefined but needing desperately to tell the other boy how he felt. 

“Sorry, yeah, of course,” Sirius murmurs. The embarrassed tone of it rings so clearly that Remus gifts him a half-smile and a short chuckle. 

“Come on then, I haven’t whacked you over the knuckles with a ruler, you ponce,” he jokes. “But thank you. It—helps, to feel some separation from the thing.”

“Of course,” Sirius murmurs again, his smile so at peace now that Sirius feels his lungs tighten to be reminded of the magnitude of adoration he held for Remus even from the outset of what they couldn’t completely understand. The two boys lay silent in the slow crawl of sunrise, in and out of liminal dozing for handfuls of minutes or seconds, as the birds start stirring in the distant outside to trill in the waking day.

“Are they expecting us back any time terribly soon?” Remus asks eventually, his voice sloughed of fog of thick sleep now but still rimed by something mellifluous. Sirius recognizes it from his place at the foot of the bed as the way Remus tended to waffle between admission and secrecy, seeing the slight avoidance of his gaze betraying the desire to pry closer, dive nearer into whatever strange and lovely waters had started to lap between the two of them. Of course he at 16 doesn’t have the proper ear for ardor yet, stumbles through his own parallel debate of wanting to introduce the need to be closer but at the time being utterly terrified of any sort of rejection. The solitude helps, though; Sirius remembers the encouragement of assurance they were utterly alone for a guaranteed stretch of more than enough time. 

Sirius sees the resolve tightening in the grey of his eyes, his jaw setting to say simply “Nah, we can take our time,” careful to hand-pick the words as he goes. The deliberate selection of _We,_ the open-endedness of _Take our time_ , innuendo or not, whatever the boys’ combined assumption would mold it into would be more than enough for the love-starved cavity of Sirius’ young heart, yearning to be filled by Remus’ attention but too afraid until now to ask for that blessed libation.

_Until now, lad,_ Sirius thinks to himself, enchanted and elated by watching this unfold. Revisiting this memory had been his best idea in a long time. 

Remus shifts, clearly deliberate from this vantage point, back to the safe little coil against Sirius’ chest from where he had woken up. After a moment of flummoxed decision, remembering the hammering heartbeat to accompany the war of victory versus terror in his eyes, Sirius rests a guarding hand around Remus’ bare shoulder and holds him ever so slightly nearer.

Sirius takes the opportunity of being an invisible third party to tip his gaze and see how Remus had reacted to the wordless reassurance, the darkened corner on a painting one has memorized and finally sees anew once it’s been restored by careful hands years later. Remus’ eyes are closed with what can only be called relief, a small smile—rare at this age on him but _Merlin risen,_ just as beautiful as Sirius remembers—curving the bow of his mouth ever so slightly at its corners. Peace, for once, for this boy so plagued with chaos. Sirius feels invincible, if not only for the moment as a simple bystander. 

He knows what comes next. The culmination he’s been yearning to revisit, rekindle, rediscover the reason he spreads himself so thinly these days with extra hours in Mort’s garage to distract him from an empty flat two weeks out of a month, makes dinners for one far more often than he had ever wanted, fears for the worst when Remus’ owl is delayed when the weather is particularly bad in other parts of the world. He needs this. _They_ need this. 

“Rem,” Sirius murmurs, one of the first times he’d ever used the nickname to find it tastes sweet on his tongue and resolves to use it more when it’s just two of them if this works— _Well done, pup, that is does,_ Sirius thinks to himself as he leans against the wall and crosses his arms comfortably, angled to watch Remus as he did back in this blustery April.

Remus looks up at that with light surprise freshening his expression attractively. “You alright?” He asks gently. 

Sirius watches with a bloom of old eagerness dredged up, the patterns of these feelings moving mirrored in him now from their place at the core of his heart, as the younger Sirius strokes a thumb across the hollow of Remus’ cheek. Pink springs to Remus’ face, blotting the spray of freckles on his nose with rosy shock. Neither of them says anything as Sirius traces the path on his skin again, again, again, softening the strange and thorny emotional walls—old and separate pains and traumas, gnarled by years of Keeping It In until they both found the unexpected solace of another soul who could somehow understand the foreign language of disrepair—between them with each pass. It’s an exceedingly brave move from Sirius, who was just as terrified of opening himself up at that age as he was of losing his friends.

“I—quite like you. And the way your face is put together,” Sirius murmurs, this attempt at suavity bungled by his own nerves and the inability to properly communicate how much he legitimately cares about Remus in this moment, every moment since they met, forever forward. 

“Thank you,” Remus breathes, not in interruption but perhaps a way to force himself to catch his breath. Sirius can see the way he’s holding himself taut, as if he might shatter a dream if he moves wrong. He adores it. Younger Sirius has the tunnel vision inherent with admission though, so he can only swallow thickly and continue.

“So I would like to maybe—I would like to try kissing you, sometime,” Sirius finally said, his hand still cupping Remus face gently like an anchor in a storm. Sirius remembers the silence of morning around them feeling as deafening as an explosion, but as an onlooker it was the gentlest background for this portrait of boyish discovery he could have ever dreamed up. 

“I think I would like that too,” Remus finally whispers, nodding with instinctive, reigned enthusiasm so the wan and fairly useless pillow beneath his head musses his hair on one side. 

In tandem with himself in this living memory, Sirius can’t hold back a smile like cloud-break, the first time he’s ever been this honest with himself or another person to boot. He takes the other curve of Remus’ jaw in his free hand, slowly, while Remus’ own hand moves to rest comfortably overtop of Sirius’ left even though his fingers are trembling slightly. Sirius tips up the seraphic face lined with pale, wondrous scars, and kisses him for the first time in a brilliant history of kisses that would, in several years, exhaust any rudimentary timeline with their sweet frequency. 

Watching, rapt and emotional, Sirius sees the reaction of Remus that he wasn’t able to see in the moment for his own closed-eyed submersion in heady sensation. Remus responds instinctively to the way Sirius curls ever so slightly nearer to him, pressing himself toward the blessed solidity of Sirius’ body, not seeking anywhere below his waist but drawn forward to the gravity of this live-wire dark-haired boy, his north star, a thread woven over time between their hearts pulling steadily now to draw them closer than ever before. His eyes are shut as well, resigned to the crashing tide of arrival, plunged into its depths and eager to absorb everything it has to offer. His hands move to Sirius’ shoulders, clutching softly to be closer, tilting his head to gain a neater slot of their lips. Sirius feels heat rise in his incorporeal face—he had thought he had maybe made up the fact of Remus’ voracity here in the jumble of Good Thoughts. Apparently not. 

The boys separate after several seconds with their breath coming in light, uneven puffs. Sirius is the first to loose a soft sniff of disbelieving laughter, mirth unfettered in the theatre of the moment. “Hallo,” he murmurs. Remus lets a chuckle slip past his own seams at that. 

“Hi,” he whispers, blushing faintly to Sirius’ absolute pleasure. “Can we do that again?”

“‘Til I can’t fucking breathe,” Sirius says, hoarse with hunger, both boys then pulling each other close with renewed eagerness to taste the promise of a life together they don’t even know of yet. 

Sirius watches for a few moments more with contentment wending through his veins before it starts to feel a bit vouyeristic. He can recall every shift of Remus’ limbs where he held him, the feeling of his tired but lovely mouth beneath his own, the smell of him from so near and how warm he was—all of it in his own plain memory, so Sirius figures it’s time to pull back and finally try to sleep. 

Drawing himself out the Pensieve is, strangely, like pulling out from a particularly fantastic bout of shagging. A full-body shiver chains its way down his spine, and Sirius shakes it off with a particularly dog-like toss of his shoulders. Slowly spelling the memory back into his wand-tip to deposit it safely back in his brain— _bone-hum, wriggling little guppy, brief feeling of an extra surge of electricity in his synapses_ —and retying his hair where it falls, Sirius feels the absence of Remus now tenfold. He misses the slow deliberation of that nascent love, the fresh discovery of What He Likes and How He Likes It. Stepping lightly back up the stairs to shut the door silently behind him, creeping back to the guest bed to burrow deep in the downy comforter, Sirius is further from sleep than ever in the surging tributaries of his mind. 

It’s silly, he knows, to pine for the newness of blind romance in a relationship that’s so established. Hell, that’s been part of the loveliness of it all—Remus gradually feeling like home, Remus’ own wants and needs slowly lining up with his, Remus’ body becoming as familiar as his own, Remus’ _mind_ becoming as familiar as his own. They’ve been growing parallel like a pair of virile bundles of climbing ivy for ten bloody years, and Sirius can’t help but feel frustrated at his own inability to feel more at peace with Remus being away so often. 

But fuck it. Sirius is allowed to miss the man he loves. He’s allowed to wish the ring on his finger was worth more to the whole fucking universe than a flippant suggestion of eternity. 

Sirius doesn’t sleep well. It’s to be expected. 

He has a lot to think about. 

—

It’s two weeks before Christmas and Remus is due home within the hour. Sirius is fairly humming with anticipation and has barred himself from brewing more coffee in case he trembles out of his own skin. An owl last night from Remus had brought a brief letter, radiant letter, perfect letter to further amplify Sirius’ ire at the accursed plague of physical distance:

_Love,  
_ _I miss you fiercely. I’m sorry I have to be away so fucking often. Clearly the publishers don’t care a whit for the fact I have a life outside of marked-up copy.  
_ _I’ve come up with some ideas going forward. We should talk them through when I’m back tomorrow.  
_ _I’m bringing a bottle of gin and fresh tobacco back with me. I plan on draining one and diving full-lunged into the other._

_Join me?_

_Ever yours and always,  
_ _—R_

So at least Sirius isn’t alone in this wasteland of unoccupied loneliness, knowing the other would never leave him but clearly feeling something’s got to give. This is one of the chief reasons he and Remus have gotten along so easily over the years—they get spitfire-angry about the same bullshit. 

Soon, like deliverance that yanks Sirius out of the crossword he’s only able to work halfway without Remus but still trying his best, the hearth finally blazes green to deposit the brilliant man before him. His lapels are dotted damp with rain from elsewhere, his hair tangled slightly with it as well, but Sirius pays no heed as he vaults up to haul Remus into a clamoring embrace. 

They stand where they are, clinging, matching their breath as they always do upon joyous return to this home, this quiet Eden; inhaling one another faintly like the Dreamweaver from last week’s indulgent spur of togetherness. 

“I’m so tired of saying goodbye to you,” Sirius says fervently into the warmth of Remus’ neck. 

“I know, Pads. Can we talk about it?”

Sirius pulls back to look at the exhausted little smile on Remus’ face, a much-needed consolation in the fucking shit-tide of slogging onward lately. Remus touches gingerly at the back of Sirius’ neck to tug him forward into a kiss that says _Peace, my dear._ It tastes of hope for fresher days. 

“Absolutely. You wrote something of gin and cigarettes?” Sirius hums when they step apart. Remus chuckles while Sirius lets him shed his outerwear and set charmed-down bundles of tiny boxes and cases on his desk. He summons up two half-filled mugs of tea for spiking liberally with the bottle Remus pulls from an inner coat pocket while a pair of freshly-rolled cigarettes loop their way onto the table, measured and neat and ready to be lit. Remus takes a moment to stretch long after removing his tie before folding himself onto the couch and touching each cigarette alight with his thumb. 

“So,” he says crisply, starting a draw on the new tobacco and gratefully accepting the tall fill of vibrant liquor in his tea as Sirius passes it to him across the couple of inches between them. “I feel like a fucking absentee.”

“Well I wouldn’t put it so harshly, but yes, that’s accurate,” Sirius replies. He sips from the burn of his boozy oolong and enjoys the way it flares with warmth down his throat. “It’s for work though, not like you’re kipping off to go dancing with go-go boys in Paris.” Sirius holds back, as best he can, the fact that he dislikes it just as much either way. 

Remus snorts, laughing through a pull of an inhale. As he exhales again, he flicks open the top two buttons of his shirt in an obvious release of daily tension. “Christ, if _only_ publishing was that exciting. You’d have joined me on the job years ago then.”

“A lot more people would be interested in academic texts if they had half-naked men in them, Rem,” Sirius doubles the jest. 

“So would the authors,” Remus replies, and it’s the mischievous light behind the green of his eyes, the head-of-operations glimmer that was there even as children clambering along through a bungled prank Remus had _told you lot that wouldn’t work!!,_ that digs hardest when Sirius has to see him leave every time. 

“So, absence,” Sirius offers. Remus sighs and nods, blowing a piston of smoke and setting his jaw. 

“I don’t want to be away so often,” he says. “I don’t like it, you don’t like it, it’s just not... _good._ I don’t want our only significant time together that isn’t fits and starts of regularity to just be the couple of days when I’m bitched up by the moon and then actually running from it.” Remus talks with his right hand when he’s particularly adamant; his cigarette held between forefinger and thumb is making tight little circles to accent his words. 

“I agree,” Sirius replies simply. He knows these sort of discussions work best when he lets Remus do the bulk of the talking. 

“I’ve been asking around to see how some of the editors who travel even more than I do deal with it; they think I have a wife, by the way, which I’m sure you think is hilarious.”

That would have bothered Sirius to his very foundations had this been four or five years ago, but surety does wonders for a sense of self-confidence. “Catch me from the right angle and they’d be right,” Sirius quips through a sip of tea, winking impishly over the brim of the mug. 

“Oh God, we should put you in a dress and bring you to some stuffed-shirt dinner,” Remus says immediately, expression afire with the idea, which is one of the barest plates of evidence of Sirius’ influence on this man in an armory of many. 

“Only if you’re willing to be summarily demerited when I refuse to shave my legs and the ruse is shattered,” Sirius insists, though it’s colored with a laugh. Remus lets another puff if smoke coil from his lips as he twines his free hand’s fingers into Sirius’. The gathering moment he takes before answering makes it clear the discussion is shifting back to brass tacks. 

“Well, quitting was one of the options I had come up with.” Remus avoids his eyes with the admission, and Sirius immediately softens. 

“Remus, you love the work. No.”

“But if it means getting to spend time with you, I—“

“I know, but I’m not going to ask you to quit doing something you enjoy just because we—“

“You’re not _asking_ me for this, Sirius, it’s an option for a choice that I’ve—“

“Well what are some other options? Because I won’t hear that one.” Sirius holds Remus’ gaze intently, his hackles unraised and the air between them calm but his heart pulling at the idea that Remus would give up anything he’s even marginally fulfilled by to try and figure out this bump in the road on his own. It was Sirius’ job to sacrifice in their relationship. Remus had been served enough fuckery already in 24 years of existing. 

“You could come with me to more places, although I would still be in meetings for bulk of them. It would be a repeat of Skegness every single time. And you’ve your own work here.”

“If that’s the only option, I can find a way to make that work. You know I’m not working for the money.”

“Right, but I’m just as loathe to let you quit a job _you_ enjoy.” Remus swirls his teabag with antsy preoccupation. 

“Tell me your list then, because I know you’ve made one.” Sirius kisses Remus’ knuckles and concedes the floor of conversation once again as Remus scowls to himself and counts off on his fingers with the cigarette still perched between two of them. 

“Quit; take you along with me; only accept books from hereon out for which I can do most of the editing from the flat; switch back to primarily copyist work; pretend I’ve come down with a horrible illness to stay home each time I’m summoned out.”

“Well technically you _do_ have a horrible illness,” Sirius hums to lighten the shadow on Remus’ brow lightly. Remus rolls his eyes, but his mouth twitches up at its corner. 

“Which do you prefer?” He asks Sirius before he kisses the inside of Sirius’ wrist in return of the invitation for a viewpoint. 

“Well,” Sirius starts, thumbing at Remus’ lower lip in wordless thanks before gathering his legs into a cross on the couch as he stubs out his spent cigarette. “You hated copyist work. And you know it’s something a 19-year-old can do, so I don’t think you’d want to stoop back to that. Would they fuss too much if you were more selective with the jobs you took? How many authors are willing to correspond over a distance?”

“Quite a few of them actually, and more lately. Charmed in- and outboxes are catching on in lots of houses.” Remus punctuates his explanation by drawing his wand to float a pair of shot glasses in from the kitchen so he can pour plain measures from the angular blue bottle of gin. “Do you think that would work though? I don’t want the flat to feel like a workplace. I like it too much.” His expression is still slightly stormy, _overthinking little lovely stoat._

“We still haven’t done anything with the spare room, do you want a designated office?” Sirius suggests. Remus looks up at him with a boyish smile that catches Sirius off-guard for its subtle sunniness. 

“Arthur fucked, aren’t we domestic,” Remus sallies, passing one of the gins over. He pauses to bite his lip in thought, looking down at his socks for a moment in more thought. “You really think that could work?”

“It’s the best option and you know it,” Sirius replies. He knocks back the shot that smacks of juniper as Remus does the same and nods to himself.

“You’re right. _I’m_ right, it is. We’re brilliant. I’m glad you feel the same way and I’m not just some clingy puppy,” Remus says with brisk purpose as he enchants their dirtied cups and ashtray into the kitchen sink. He looks back to Sirius and takes both his hands in lazy contentment, smile serene and matter-of-fact. “I’ll bring this up with the chief editors then. It will take a few weeks to work out, but I’ll get it rolling. How was Andromeda’s?”

Sirius’ insides thrum happily when he involuntarily recalls the Pensieve, but he resolves to get the perfunctory family information aired first. “Dora’s getting tall, taking after Ted.”

He tells Remus an abridged version of the two days spent there, beach walks and imaginary games with his precocious little cousin buttressed by loads of cooking alongside Andromeda and helping Ted tinker with a few Muggle parts he’d gotten from confiscated lots at the Ministry. 

“They’re confiscating old machinery now?” Remus snorts from his position propped up against Sirius’ chest, lying back into him like a living chaise lounge. 

“I know. Apparently everything has the potential to be cursed by extremists who have evacuated raid sites. They’ve some sort of warning system for Aurors,” Sirius scoffs. He sips again from the gin before smoothing Remus’ hair back from a corner of his forehead. “But some of the pieces Ted’s got his hands on are fascinating. Including,” he amends softly, “a Pensieve that’s now sitting in their basement.”

“Tell me you used it.” Remus twists to face him, budding eagerness shining up at him. 

“Who the fuck do you think I am? Of _course_ I used it.”

“Where did you revisit? James’ wedding? New Year’s? Harry’s birthday?”

_Shit, those would have been good._ Sirius smiles wryly halfway to himself, distant thoughts of political fears re-shoved to the back of his brain. “Nothing so un-selfish, try again.”

“Graduation.” Remus continues listing landmark events as Sirius shakes his head at each one; “One of your birthdays. One of _my_ birthdays. One of James’ birthdays? Lily’s baby shower. Move-in day here. First time we shagged.”

“Closer,” Sirius hums. 

“First time you told me you love me? First time we smoked together. First time we kissed.”

“There you are,” Sirius says lightly. He adores the way Remus’ eyes widen slightly, ever the inability to conceal the little ways in which Sirius’ propensity for ridiculous romanticism surprise him. _Dear mercy, I have missed you so._

“When exactly was that? It’s all tangled for me in our stupid unending refusal to admit we were mad for each other.”

“April, 1976,” Sirius says gently, shifting to lean Remus against his shoulder so they can face one another, “you’d just turned 16. The moon had been easy, the Shack was still cold, you were warm, and I was so fucking enchanted by you that I didn’t know what to do with myself besides ask if I could kiss you.”

“Oh lord, you did ask!” Remus says, memory sparking visibly in his smile on the breath of a chuckle. “And you sounded like a plonker when you did it too.”

_“Thanks,”_ Sirius grunts, bumping their foreheads together lightly. “Only because I knew you could have beat the shit out of me if I had tried without warning and you didn’t like it.”

“Well I’m glad I liked it,” Remus hums, warm as contentment as the radiator begins to knock softly on the wall beside the hearth behind then. “How was it then? Was it as lovely and clumsy as I can recall?”

Sirius sees then in the ardor behind Remus’ gaze, the way he leans into Sirius as if nothing else would ever be so easy, swirled up in the hovel of return and the shared decision of solution to keep him nearer. Nothing is more important than this—two torn and bitten hearts having found one another across the impossibility of existence, pulling themselves out of the ruddy muck that fate has served them and running far, far away from the worst of it hand-in-hand. 

“It was so clear that you loved me so much earlier than I had let myself believe,” Sirius whispers as he brings his hand to Remus’ cheek to mirror that old and indolent touch of his thumb on the skin there—again, again, again. 

“I’ve come around,” Remus replies just as softly, “to the fact that I think I loved you before I even knew exactly who you were.”

“Dangerous,” the world curling like steam in air had they been outside, curling sensuous to mask the echoing depth of perfect and shuddering warmth that blooms in Sirius’ chest at that truth.

“You’re the one hitched yourself to a werewolf,” Remus mutters sweetly. 

“As if I ever had a choice, you fantastic creature.” Sirius’ breathless oath finds its punctuation on Remus’ lips, opening to him like petals in eager reception. 

Snow begins to fall outside like so many thousands of whispers, the whispers that have started building behind things once thought sealed tight and ended—Sirius knows this, can sense it lately like the charge of a distant thunderstorm in the way the radio avoids talking about it and the papers skirt around printing it. Nothing truly terrible yet, but sure to become so. He’s felt this silent unease before in the eaves of Grimmauld.

But nothing else can matter beyond this little universe. Nothing so vile exists, magical or not, that can ever ruin this bulwark of love Sirius has so fastidiously built with the man in his arms, so Sirius fends off his fears the only way he knows how and loses himself in everything that is Remus.

Half an hour later, pleasure taken right there on the sofa in deep dives of ardor to white out the rearing face of anxiety, Sirius watches Remus stare out the window with sleepy satisfaction. 

“It’s snowing,” Remus says simply. His neck is still slightly flushed from a climax that had made his thighs shudder against the small of Sirius’ back. Before Sirius can reply, still somewhat catching his breath from the spontaneous and lovely fuck, Remus begins to sing softly to himself. _“...When the snow lay ‘round about, Deep and crisp and even; Brightly shone the moon that night, Thought the frost was cruel—“_

_“When a poor man came in sight, Gath’ring winter fuel...”_ Sirius joins in to finish. Remus glances at him on the last trailing note with a beaming smile that is all youth, the bare and rare past pulled into the present in a shining moment of unknowing bliss. 

“What do you want for Christmas?” Remus asks through a yawn that catches him unawares. 

“Some bloody world peace, a new headlamp for the bike, and a full day in bed with you,” Sirius sighs automatically. He doesn’t have heart to admit the first item on the frivolous list is more than a tired joke this year.

Sirius dozes soon with his chin resting on the dip of Remus’ shoulder, in and out of consciousness. In the middling awareness of half-sleep, Sirius swims through the current of his thoughts. They careen between light and dark, old and new, every extreme and back again as his head is constantly wont to due when he isn’t present enough to police the dramatics.

Pulled soon back into the present by Remus stirring softly to stand from the sofa, Sirius blinks several times to summon wakefulness into his bones.

“Shh,” Remus murmurs, “keep sleeping, sorry. I’m going to rearrange the spare room a bit. Rest, love.” He pulls the heavy plaid woolen blanket on the couch back overtop of Sirius to make his tender point. 

_One fracture repaired,_ Sirius thinks to himself, eternally pessimistic on the cusp of thickened slumber as he slips past its gates—the inner shadows he tries to keep forever hidden from Remus, _more than we might ever fucking know left to go._

 

_—fin—_

**Author's Note:**

> I figured they've been together long enough at this point to hash something important out without shouting or crying. I also just really wanted to finally write out that memory/Pensieve scene, so I'm happy I was able to finally find a place to fit it :> Thank you again for reading! You all are lovely <3


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